Mom & Bob
Georgetown, Guyana, 1973
no negro Indian whiteman in the veins− how Funk & Wagnalls does
Caucasian
that’s Bob from Manitoba, somewhere near Brandon; he’n Bartica made
snake eyes together
Sacred Heart behind Sister Brian nodding off 11am Mom at Palm Court
Main Street
“when she does come back she doesn’t bring any new food
but she has plenty of left-overs from the monkey she killed”
Bob is this Bob is that twinkle eyes pink man turkey neck
Manitoba Sul says not Magyar but Aryan Anglo-Saxon not Breton
race-stocks Funk of mankind Wagnalls 73, 732 sq. m. in W. Canada
41 kms from Georgetown
stop for breath Timehri now
Cheddi Jagan Janet next door squeezing a ball
Post-stroke outside on the terrace, Merrymen in from Barbados Palm
Court, Bob watches
jump up people owned by Uncle Sultan pissing himself you know an
auntieman in Jamaica
battyman
spirits other parts buller but when Bob asked him who is that? who is
Mom? Uncle Sultan sober
says,
“my sister will never any whiteman capital Winnipeg touch
she fancy Mr. Rochester country where the animals have so many damn
faces!”
like the rule of nouns I’ve learned from Mom & Bob & Bob smells
Lucky Luke-like
when the Liberty opens in Old Spice
Mom & Bob all alone no chaperone Asha Boshle in flickers
let’s misbehave where pit erupts
broken glass scunt! like Uncle Sultan yells does piss & white rum
coming up on you
balcony where bottles flung at the screen meets a high noon bug out
unhappy story endings we don’t know, Gary Cooper must win? no?
Mom & Bob don’t like this derniere tango Paris derriere
wish they could throw the story they like at the screen too much get
married move to Ottawa
but dead Brando hurts the eyes to read this English in Anchor butter
bend the pirouettes at the end
this right wrong justice show
you that flickers hold on!
pleasure the film because!
of course, this is only a matinee.
no late shows, pictures without sound don’t remember the songs
a kiss made the red man red I think just mom has jugs like all the men will
one day
look at me
Chaiyya Re Chaiyya Re this recess from school makes her
scholar me
too much world had the cinema, that radio there, see a ceiling fan too,
hooves running in the yard
next door, hear?
when you 20,000 leagues nothing dear into the flickers.
With grandpa we see the Indian pictures
alone we see Peter Benchley how holler beneath Jacqueline Bisset
Nick Nolte’s girlfriends run their lips up down this island chalked
on blackboards these notes I take as you watch me grow into Aunty Man
now she is American out with Bob Ma dresses
like she looks good tonight
she will send her aura off with champagne
avoid Gena Rowlands
& grandpa.
Archie now stuck in mannerist frames
on a mantle above a fire that doesn’t keep me warm
like the poet says it is pornography up there
look at him join the dead ones lined up on Christmas morning
on this coast Heart of the Amazon don’t ask don’t see
the deal he makes with me is
cry him in story cotton wool tree
presents from Guyana Stores
kerchief
Their trick to equal night and day beat beat tom tom shadows Kernal
Wild in The Naked Prey
why? they die too far across the sand
they die, darling, beneath the moon
or under the sun I sit atop Archie
adoptee
mom
Little Master Timeline
18 to 42 disco
horizons
-less
that means never
die
pow!
there’s
sex after, so saying, he caught him up, and without wing
of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
over the wilderness and o'er the plain.
read more hippogriff where the masters let
them
all hang out come on sons Daddy Night
Mephistopheles
bring the rubbers,
of
course
you
and me,
nuh?
19 head
griffin claws
hooves horse tail
Moors from Afric
43-? disco
with horizon means
yes
yes it does all end
bump
and grind bump and grind bump and grind
like
mom & Bob you and me on dancefloors
berth
death dearth birth like in the old books
a
thousand arms
hands
everywhere
Sinbad,
Sunday, 3pm
at Plaza
at 6 and 7, mom put green aliens on the
birthday cake
mom poses mon tues weds thurs fri sat sun
morning downward dogs starts
the day
short pants time
little master
in panties
3 instant
ego before hush hush shut
up
do it this way Ma in the gallery you can’t always get what you want
loud
thinking
“been here before
atom bomb”
14 read
more hippogriff mister
half
of her half of him some Bob some mom
Boyhood Thinks
last boy stands.
Gibralter.
the universe villain cosmic junk mash-up coolie
screams Earth.
did you wake the scientist up for me? where will
I touch ground?
approximately.
on TV,
they say the Nubian desert.
grab Atlas laugh child through the pages
hurtle down from space without prior warning
Sandals Grande Antigua
that's quite a crater, eh?
what India dream leave rifle barrel at speed?
hear the smashing glass in the underpass Dollar Bills Alternative Tuesdays really gay.
on TV,
they say the Nubian desert,
though no one says it like that Kingston, Ontario
1988 before Grandpa dies
joins the car crash set a dancing year Ma to Georgetown toothpaste 140 Guyanese
dollars
learned a new word today atom bomb
"in the shape of an ibex with wheels"
steaming up the night rooms
a soju zombie in Jongno.
a burnished philosopher sees you a retreating
sign said to be from Gilan.
Thursday night fights in Walkerville changing
lives a family tree is a house.
Seoul remembers scattered Guyanese Shindang
granny takes me back after Gwoemul.
memorize April showers! Tonight we fight for Tony Leung blue waterfall Caetano in pieces
history sinks teeth into ocean teeth jerked off
rain a few blocks away
Incas along the Rideau River. A roadside minara
grows tall in cinnamon. Khatoon's house
sharpens knives against you hides the marzipan
from the witching hour auntieman
shooting his orchestra in hoarse Sydney Sheldon.
grandma knows you spill your beans in outside
discos.
on TV,
they say the Nubian desert.
alligators awake in the anger bed. primordial.
little death
belly upright ABCs unphotographable love. In the
morning,
they sweep up the used rubbers
serviced by rainstorms this morning all I want is
a Western breakfast
get cracking ice hold fast to spring
Lake Ontario poesy plots the first parade of
seven inches
electronic in the dorms.
"disappointed on dancefloors"
faggotguts gots
spit paradise
garage phantasmagoric had to say that, Saint
flick prick
wand pretty, nuh?
"it
was the lure of the big lights. Mephistopheles tunnels in the tubs
Saturnights
the best though surprised at Sunday afternoon's scorecard
fucking."
after stonewall this that
and fucking
spit: milky way hand hungry
worth
pays pays watch it and
stand
warm tug mouth son
imaginary
got guts
lights!
concrete! modern!
(“...tantrum
in dad's yard
("...disappointed
on dancefloors
(“...on
your kness whimsy skid
raleigh's guiana dabbles in alchemy mettalurgy
before london tower lock up spies seen far up the river
watches out for spaniards.
raleigh's guiana canoes fugitives upcountry
searches gold deposits fallen foul of his English expedition
few ornaments
twists NAMILCO cheese hope
"in sight of the great river
Orenoque."
pretty
prick, nuh?
War Criminals
i am in an ocean in an oven
and the white boys drink unimaginable carnage in Libya
bring Ovid lustier than connect the dots Wolfe Island
a plaid laugh in Madras underlined in pencil
grow the kind kids make and leave on dinner tables
selector of hearts eyes of ma pa so many streets of you
a piss a toke a feast of coke warm fat as the Neapolitan drips
return to find pa's geography click clack Port Sprainers
windy drive home to Westmoorings stickball doubles songs
sated Portuguese hunger pencils rubbers home again
islands fired up by uncles see modern like acetate family portrait
governed by Mercury
Dear Billy,
In Tobago, my tongue still spews Smokey &
Bunty's in St. James.
I see the Rafeek Mosque drive in from Piarco. Of
course, I had to write a calypso.
Not a naughty one. Everyone knows big bamboo. Or,
a newspaper one: Adolf Hitler
get lick by the red, white & blue. It would
go feet taps floor
finger drums table everywhere
love
turn the fallen
anaconda
back
my
Cuffy up top
anaconda
back
Cuffy
anaconda back on the back
surprise
land parade of parrot fish sing
dash
child of rivers
send
him back
blink blue essequibo
fallen back
love
turn anaconda back
to
you Henri-Julien -27
on
BBC Weather
Nightmare
jungle
coughs
jumbie
sucks
blood
bored
sheds
skin
you know it as Hajee
soul, massa
see you strange feathers on the sam
Amazon masquerami
commonpoor continental charade
laughs past midnight
no, i know, Guyana
izzan island
collossal afternoon pang. i make matinees. drippy
features. Bob by the Demerara.
all that white man gone primitive shit.
shuffleboard. sweets. Mom. dessert fork. right hand.
scared we'd crawl out portholes. die again ocean.
Bob said: "go ahead. try the custard."
more Coke bottles lost count in that photo. bury
fish rhymes in a kiss. lazy eyes.
tonight,
don't dream
these made up
crowded mind horns
where ears sing songs
less than Greek
little weak
open
speak.
The Greatest Films
rise in space? palm end porno sped up? free of pa
left the death play wore white like Horatio?
in Mellors? Brando's lusty back? Alec Scudder
parlor smoke whorehouse music prayers I can't pronounce?
Eid-ie sweet tooth money? Sunday kites praying
laughs
free at last fathers segue into a world of
marvels? Doug McClure lost lips applaud snow?
dinosaurs? gods? lost national geographicals in
Mowsie teeth? snow cone National Park?
see Baap surrender the last metro to broken down
folks?
au revoir Amerindia? bacchic disco like Proust in
innocent Spring? rough in age red rocket
smashing moons in Spain?
Steve McQueen mamas barbed-wire border sings
Someone To Watch Over Me?
Edgar Rice wooly rhino burrows in useless lifebelts?
Ottawa, 1978
oh yeah
find them plates
on the wall air brush roses
kids!
the genius of invention is plaster of Paris
listening
under her nails
soon, they'll be home. the 148'll pull up on
Canterbury Ave. Gilligan's Isle at 4. she'll laugh.
no ahir. no brahman. no chatri.
Calcutta. Natal. Demerara.
chop chop nostalgia.
they don't know the kind,
you know?
this afternoon: burgers, fries, centuries serve
no shakes.
sugar kills cities.
oh yeah
cooliewoman
dogears
photobooks
kids!
leave this suburb unlit
London shadow blind
in winter dead
there was in my head not here
Bob said it looked like England. It doesn't.
In spring, worm guts boots watches pissy holes
left by dogs.
Wilkie Collins flips the bird at her camera.
Georgetown jalousies
pining pine tarts
through her.
Boyhood Thinks
pillage centuries puts revolution in heels so
that Elizabeth Taylor doesn't get told.
Fukishima feels sci-fi an actress choses this
time to die turns up the TV thunder.
sons tangled up anthems envy the daughters where no peasants
die.
and India gets study in books left in cafes
beside melted cakes.
approaching pavonis mons by balloon we hear mazurkas nice with coffee a true night of love.
mind flames fires up the archipelago stops at St.
Lucia no aunties there.
awake Seoul into plantation rage press into
broken morning bread.
clockwork orchid remembers sweaty suitcases
before Canada Bob's 3 prong country.
walk around the block Zombie on repeat empire
freeze remind Fela of piss rivers.
far out pharouch instead of pow! I bang the drum
acapella culster bomb buy L'isle Noire in English.
I get goosebumps Mercutio his Queen Maab.
transfers my husband to give my property municipally
until my said son reaches 35.
take my suggestions for you inter-tropical tear
Levi-Strauss open face a champagne send off.
like Gena Rowlands the fight to live must makes
them notice cross your ocean hope to die.
grown up Monte Cristo counts 52 villains in a
deck of cards.
hatches jokers Uncle Sol Uncle Babu searches
typical coolie villages on postcards
Trinidad 1896.
cucumber cabbage Sir Clifford Sifton kills the
Indian summer in your blue lagoon.
and I approached by balloon a peacock in the
shadow of Olympus dusting off an ancestor.
Nightmare
two storied wooden
house with enclosed bottom flat and open front stairs entering
the gallery in its
centre with gable end roof design features
ornate
fret
work
on facsia boards
and window sills
mid-afternoon oh
fuck there he is he can't even wait for the night
star gazing
expired father lost in the kids
debris of mirrors
he
grabs
oily
poulouries
equatorial
scene
throws up ocean
scorn
demons
the voyage across
Cries Stories
1 unopened 8 ml bottle of eye drops from England.
Expiry Date 10-45.
An old pen knife tempts me.
Know 40 virgins after no the Mullahs won't tell.
A letter from Greece.
"Don't wild while Paradise waits."
Homemade rotis (Mary) 1049 Wellington St. Apt.
27, Ottawa, 729-9205 (after 6 pm)
A book mark. Roses and Wasps by Chao Ch'ang.
A ZigZag match box covered in candle wax. Made in
Indonesia. For sale only in France.
Close up on one watch a mouth speak.
An old suitcase. Homesick sprites.
"I shall win my kingdom, Rabindranath
Tagore!"
BP 160 over 90 Bob should aim for.
Old sweepstakes tickets: "Sweet kisses"
"Sweet hugs" "I love you" "I miss you" on them
say.
Sonia. Sasha. Peter and the Wolf. A macaw steps
right up. Steps right up.
Carnival 1974. Scratched up Ravi Shankar long
playing RCA Victor on the floor.
A house near kokers spits toucans from Main
Street to City Hall.
Georgetown girl.
Eddie Grant & the Equals airy spirits Ba'ap
Mowsie and the rest don't dance to that.
Wrong Essays
Java, 2004
as
"art," as "poetics"
the audience is them: Ba’ap, Mowise, pa, later Mom, later Bob,
sometimes Fazlah forces Khatoon too
terror when Lady Auntieman get force in Jack n’ Jill
normalization/socialization
of death
surplus power of the condemned body gives rise to the
doublement soul
ref.
to the Gothic
productive
and subjective
in
the political field
the
punishment of the beyond
confession
living
proof
posit
salvation
render human
Massola
(read him)
an
object of knowledge
incognito
not just any faggot
fascinating
language theatre of
comedy
soul
erects
impossible men
review
judgment
before
we jerk off I reread Kant
lists
genealogies too
execution
revolt
=social
disturbance
summation
what
should be admitted
my body on the other side Mephistopheles power/knowledge might at
midnight
a
"Modern Soul" wow!
last
word last meal
ref.
to Walpole queer scream
secular
squeeze as hero
"gallows
speeches"
say cheer the battymen
open fly afternoon
what should be abandoned?
execution=unrest
did you say that? "the soul the prison the body
that"
Bruce
Lee dungaree
corpse
microphysique
pure
cruise poesie
The
Perfumed Garden
"economy
of suspended right"
a record of madness
using memory to force the joins
don't want to feel the split can't cry there here tears fork
the fire next time,
according to Sister Brian, so I chase down ands
speak in Bahasa to get away
papayas
mangoes
red tapioca
many more assalamwalaikums
and and and earth like this before “breathe”
Museum
grow your hair long the muezzins call
the sun that obvious shine watches head on shoulder we planned
in September to take a cab to the museum, there's no rain
we'd change the Wong Kar Wai we'd miss the monsoon completely meet
at the Door to the Great Mosque in Cizre walk with the Rod of Moses
can see me aching in another mid afternoon Turkish
delight?
(you will find him in a bowl of winged lions
Mazda that killing time wrapped up in sweaty Calvins
cruising park Ahabs)
affect a limp before you find me in Composition X make me laugh
we don't want ajumma to hear your yuk yuk Classicists in touch drunk
nights
oh it's ok chingu wears friend in the great escape
button flys quick! quick! behind the Kandinsky you could host
an evening of erotica
(you could see Fuji from Tokyo though I never did
now let's get back to Seoul
I am bored of these jars from Peshawar)
develop an obsession with binoculars cross dress a neighbour watch him
Angie Dickinson standing by the Giacometti he always looks so great in
wigs
before DVDS you could find this on cassette in Shindongnegori Push!
Leolo! Push!
in Montreal Gloria showing me how to heat up rice without a microwave
I used to spy on Etienne
(you never walk with me in Yeouido to see the cherry blossoms
hear ajoshi say some boys just wanna spend money on expensive cars
not you I'll tell him)
build a Sir Walter Raleigh effigy in a car park to set fire
why does what makes the red man red hanamannadunga feel so boyish?
and what's wrong with the Rothko you laugh at ablaze
some orange up there some red down here?
no I don't cheat on you when I go to the museum
except that time when I drank from the saucepan
of Abraham
(your uncle was a tea farmer he would send us the best tea
from Shizouka his friend Manu the best from Tanah Rata there's this
movie
where the actress gives the actor a blowjob would you like
to go see the intellegentsia gasp?)
say all art remembers he turns tricks in the turban of Joseph
for example, on warm evenings while walking in the footprints of PBUH
he who will not be named PBUH just in case when I went on Umrah,
there was this prayer for you in your bent way, iron nails, I join you
dragons in central Anatolia I cut my hair between Safa and Marwah
(when we crossed the Han River
the running family without Richard Dawson
Gwoemul in the film in my brain
listen to it the sound of my piss
the river is full of my piss)
break the pink hearts apart waterfalls the coo coo roo coo coo
never shared with you so isn't it funny
all these hearts in front of the beaux arts? once, Bahram IV had this
dagger
I walked thousands of years into the past to
love o killing machine who wiped you clean at night? was it the king
in the spirit of all those queens on Homo Hill that made you
ceremonial?
(I resisted his necklaces in agate glass gold Carnelian
matched the Portuguese check Dutch check English check
Japan a Staebrok Market in Melaka scarlet
fleets of UFOs above Fukishima look! I was born
in Berbice)
approach Pavonis Mons by balloon send more pictures of you
earthquakes great winds fires famine
so think like Chagall the only peacock in all those mountains
make me dusty this passport is an elaborate lie
we only slowly grew west I keep postcards that say East Indian
typical coolie village upper Canada chingu the world
spins around
(are you a student of history he asks which never gets asked in Seoul
why is this insertion into the English Gatekeeper so sexy?
no poet of lost states scratches his head not just another eye drop
in the ocean)
Nightmare
Mowsie
cough
up
drops
Strepsils
pocket
by Night big letter here cause it's a character, old black magic Night
you lock out, spits
demons from its palms, Ali Baba Ali Baba, coughs up Mowsie, blood love
blood love, she is
Pa's mum, bloody she'll drag the bodies of the kids away.
she shows up in the Antonioni psych trip Ma is having in the living
room. I can smell
Tea for the Tillerman background.
when
Mowsie shows
snapsnappaddywhack"owhatalittlemoonlightcando!"
when the kids take Pa away cry so hard for him Heaven spill over get
chase out by wood ants
so hard they look like Pa
Ma
locks
Mowsie
out.
Express Bus Terminal, Stall #3
Seoul, 2003
:"my uncle a tea farmer the best from Shizouka"
:"Glenlivet in jeans disco much?”
: "B movie brain eaters at the Mun Hwa Sauna”
:"on a clear day we could see Fuji from Tokyo"
:"young people nowadays spend their money on expensive cars"
: "yabazabbah77 a stoic cummer before the 6am
to Pusan”
: "mazurkas in the morning fucking around”
:"glory hole mouth”
: "sci-fi soju tongue slow down”
: "cufflinks straddle elephants la dadi la dada”
: "wild combos”
: "fought in Phuket before salat again”
: "sipping cocks and playing games”
:"such big hands Richard Carlson potato queens”
:"like Choi jin-sil if they catch Leslie Cheung in my mouth”
:"curious Osan tonight”
: "sweaty Calvins call cruising a good time”
War Criminals
Saturday night
pound
street
cake
scarf
tied
“les quartre cent coups”/i thought i heard you say
right?
it’s always some boy Genet will want to fuck
in ten years of so
shelved at Boite Noire
as the French New Wave
right?
“goodbye fucking children”/even Louis Malle shows up
Luftwaffe mouth
that’s some shit
I cried for hours
lights out lights up
Let’s go to Infidels
feed truffles to Truffaut
six pack eight pack
hot stuff,
eh?
fag
guts
e trip avec avec avec up
to so long Marianne
6
am eternal
-27
swamped
butt
spin
spin
sugar
soft
-ed
Franken
fish
-ended
the fags
Bob Fosse moves
Song
&
Cancer dance
we had friends in faded brown cords
nut huggers on the 55 St. Laurent
“I wanna see all my friends at once/ I wanna go
bang”/back
couldn’t wait to wake Fernando up
wouldn’t you like to be Guyana you?
be Guyana be be Guyana
rough
thumb
monster
hitch rides
bleu
nuit train
galaxy
dungarees
glory hole
knees
are me “gonna take you higher”?
,army? arm-y.
War Criminals
Montreal, 1998
in the wrong place above Fernando’s
because I saw this film once [jeez why didn’t I ever fuck a side of beef?
why was it always the carrot up the bum?] or
I heard “I Just Wanna Know” slow jams radio to
stop those nights in Montréal
here, Bob brought Mom for le super-sexe Olympic
Aida St. Denis sup
here, Mark brought me for the
in-those-days-Moroccan-
not-cheap-Afghani-shit here
In those days, Pirate Jenny smoke some dance some
“that’ll learn ya!” Manhattans in the dyke bar
away from the mens let’s just kiss and say goodbye
[jeez I never got to say goodbye Auntieman Lady found a letter you
wrote me
on the radio, after Reagan though, and Lou was right there were no
parades
on Halloween for years] or
humid goodbye writes was i ever equatorial? i
ain’t got no believe you. some Caetano also.
Iqbal was a ball motorcycle Pride Punjabi comb,
right tight? [jeez
I saw this play once where Billy kept saying gay
without pets. Goldbloem Bogo racing through the apartment
Henri-Julien, why here? Why not a little farther up where they speak
English?] or
drunk yes drunk we’d walk up Duluth screaming
push! Leolo! push! before hitting The Main the
hippies come out the hippies come
out in springtime [jeez there I’d go, open mad unlock the ancestors, hear them:
we’ve found you! we’ve found you!] or
I once read this book everyone became hypertelic
hard words I looked them up watched them exceed
passage watched them get to die
on dry land water what water? Crusoe used up
Caliban not again paradime [jeez and me
here trying this tongue like Cesaire like with all that sand? in the
wee wee, we
could scream the archipelago push bhai push squeeze your way out dash
the yourope equals Aziz collar back stud to Fielding] or
there was Billy beside ourselves, again belly
floats
don’t wake Fernando oats snoring down
stairs
Edgar Mittelhozer’s Mount
Real
Montreal, 1950s
The night you woke up again
leaving Hebrew Academy in Cote St. Luc someone assassinates you again
Art’s mother never got Dachau scratch out she head again
killed herself before he turned twelve like my brothers and I
these dreams of getting round up murdered do you remember the dirty
yous?
how Lauzon shows them? that we kept far away from the French again.
That night I read Edgar’s bone flute he could hear French & German
&
English & Italian but it is the tongues he could not identify “too
deaf ear to
describe” that made you a swastika & a frozen end & a song
& a dance
dead cabaret Sally Bowles faraway how push Leolo push echoes through
an empty bus station as Christopher Isherwood backs back into Britain
can you see that? & the cloak and dagger coating his cock
those boys still swimming bad hard bags along the Rhine Moselle Mosul
in California he’d resurrect wilkommen bring the music play back to
the fag ends.
Edgar spent a year here before the cold drove him back to Guyana
he was writing Kaywana “a degree of negro parentage”
in a cafe he told me “I am an offshoot” he told
“I am an offshoot of a Swiss-German plantation manager of the 18th
century
of a Frenchman from Martinique of an Englishman from Lancashire”
but that little black in me used to live somewhere near here maybe
next door
to Bains Coloniale? Next door to the Family Robinsons?
We’d swim bad talk about the dream pull our trunks down at La Cite
bienvenue
low culture stoned, can you hear the drums
Fernando is listening even to Portuguese love songs next door bem
vinda in drag
where the orchestra leaves your troubles at the door
Pirate Jenny’s shoot em ups piled higher and higher in the “that’ll
learn ya!” countdown
escape routes the Indians like the Jews
Steve McQueen root root escape Uncle Faz he even got his mistress out
tell me again about Baumgartner through Bombay into Venice.
Edgar Mittelholzer’s Mount
Real
Guyanese Interior, 1999
“He proceeds to infect an element of impending disaster and gloom into
the story by investing the natural surroundings with little touches of despair.
For example, the fireflies in their deadly, silent
dance heighten the vigilant aspect of the dark.”
A.J. Seymour on Edgar Mittelholzer’s My Bones and My Flute
[Accept the
all we one family argument]
Mittelholzer looking at the large mad words ad-
mixture in the palms of his hands
botfly maggot
holds Kaywana
by the Corentyne
writing Creole
Chips. Ships
line up outside the slaughterhouse
black pudding blood
feeds Cuffy 23 Feb
fixings some Roger Moore.
They did a good job when they mixed you from
nothing.
Peeled law and order out of Puritans.
War Criminals
Mecca to Madinah, 2009
if Ba’ap jump out boo! how can you do Umrah,
nasty mind?
AND
ladadiladada ladadiladada ladadiladada ladadiladada ladadiladada
ladadiladada
sing for Cairo throwing thrones a prince hip a
swollen lip
leave your somethingsomethingsomethingsomethingsomethingsomethingsomething
at the door
say safety pins
hold up ihram
bang bang
AND
forgive me money belt forgive
me money belt forgive me belt
AND
stegosaurus suck
as pilgrims walked in circles kissing stone
I gave thanks for you,
your cock too
AND
pissing in the desert’s not the same as pissing in
the snow
ears don’t ring you can’t know yellow white melt
sunken grey
dancehalls full of noughts
AND
Scatter!
yana hey
yanoho gu ya na guy ana
guya na g u y a n a heyyanaho guy
wait for Ba’ap to ok bhai,
what you do with the i-a-n-a?
Walter Scott in Twyfords toilet bowl
yeah bhai!
and me submitted
through
spilt
we split we split ran down the road with some sweet handsome porky
soft bat face bwoy
Boyhood Thinks
Or, follow-up fashion stories from the murder rer
Barrington Levy version old school blood upon your shoulder
of Osama bin Laden.
Of course, no Gershwin skyscraper eavesdrops on sila
buka kasut bibiru sipiri beeberoe
a tee shirt in Bukittingi Maninjaw teen.
And no jumbie spoke to me Sarawak spook not
Spanish X not French X not Pourtagee X don’t know what
made me forget the dragonflies above the
Forbidden City
as the ushers called me. “Sir. Sir. It’s time to
leave the museum. Closes in five
minutes.” The palace closing fulfilled in the
price of its history for a Tuesday.
Pu Yi’s red doors closing in out into a history
hi hello hallow all at the same time.
That evening Ven called to say something’s going
on in New York.
Vincent Van Ven muscular alley planks stubborn to
Attack of the Wood Ants! called.
To say Demerara
Groenhart sings “O lime bush ripe” Neapolitan-lush like Caruso
Geographer Cafe
thank you please come again drink cloves & milk in Kalibaru,
we could see it
from Prospect Park.
But this is
Kuching. Not Fazlah long arm leg rest Berbice chair. Not Mom, Muskoka chair, me
& Bob
& leeches at
Meech Lake & Jay Scott dyes a draft dodger Adirondak in Toronto.
“Draw white light
like Ba’ap in ihram bussing through the back door
circle my bed
“been around the world and I can’t find my baby and I and I” force-field
against night
fest toons Pa’s
Americas a Cast of Characters KAPOWS! yardstick, wooden with silver ends,
“you from outside
now, bhai!” it’s not the end of the world,
don’t arkestra
know that yet Sun Ra?”
Or, earshot
Mohammedan measures says no know Kolkata to the peek-a-boo prince hard as I
wash my ass
100% cotton, made
in India, forgive me money belt, five thousand Riyals, don’t eat with the left.
Satan right-handed
chauffeured car rental Jakarta
trapped in
Chagall’s red city: “surely, we can be gay here?
sweet &
handsome?”
Ven drops by every
Sunday every “So, what the war said this week master?” greeting.
We sit down with
the headlines say this
is what it said in
Libya this is what it said in Tunisia this is what it said in Egypt
this is what it
said piled higher higher
in the “that’ll
learn ya!” defecating, as Lauryn sang, on the microphone.
Cook-up now “all a
we” how Bob loved Mom creolized, in this name
she gave me
details in the takedown of murder rer.
In the deck of
cards, 52 terrorists, I found uncle Faz, Abdel, Sultan cha cha.
No women yet. Did
these kids who lose a cricket ball in a compound
know they mouth
rice mouth side by side with a father like mine? Real coolieman nacion
natio flips the
bird in nations like mine.
“So, what the war
said?” Ven spooning dhall from grandma’s recipe
into the Royal
Doulton bowl. You see? That survived the we split we split ships chips
against rock
wrapped in newspaper how Mom ate it in Wales before Thalidomide
during Spock she
came to Swansea to profit in language a lucky one that Zianatool
assalamwalikum she
had me until we meet again in Paradise.
I recall best.
Two. Three. Four. Five spirits.
But, once, let me
tell you before I show you, OK? Let me tell you
because this is
what we do where I’m from we tell tell tell some kiss
and we yell like
those same kids I met in Java. Osama’s poking proud
from faded tees
nose piece of eye
piece of Taliban
on his head. I don’t want anything.
I don’t want
anything. Just to see the Buddhas.
My mouth opens in
all that American. I wanted to say, before I came here,
to Jogja, I heard
him fi true, the screaming God in the Grand Mosque
in Banda Aceh,
felt the djinns in the marble that kept the wave away
spared Hassan who
hid there.
War Criminals
Ottawa 2000
in the wrong place
playing 15 movies in 15 minutes
Pyaasa/The Evil Dead/Krakatoa, East of Java West!
you fools spark another one
Fernando sleeps I love you still like Alice bee
toke/Crimes and Misdemeanors we never made them
her brownies Gertrude would laugh, right? Merry
Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Tom Conti breaks
Bowie’s heart/Sakamoto also and the drip from the
tip David Sylvian yes him/
Night of the Living Dead in the wrong place when
we should’ve been in front of the TV when Di die
but who the fuck was she? Billy said crashing in
the same car/
Star Wars I’d say that was my mother I wanted the
world to cry
she hated the Rafeek Mosque to pray behind the
men it’s just as well she’d say
they all fart when they lean over smash their
heads spot on God, see?/yes Billy
it ruined Hollywood but it’s still here 8 1/2 Mowsie
in the kitchen cooking Ba’ap big pop
in the masjid plotting pipes cherry tobacco that’s
right I smell Grandpa/Chungking Express
sometimes Demerara Radio speaks of women who blow
themselves up Battle
of Algiers All About My Mother because it came
out the year she died before she
could give me Truman Capote show I died/I wish my
mother could watch the end of Full Metal Jacket
Hanoi in the eyes of the sniper the only woman in
the film/except the mothers Europa Europa Cabaret
freedom to show the cut cock cross Dresden again
freedom to be semite Muslim semite Jew
Marmite and the Garden of the Finzi-Continis they
write to though not like her in Farewell, Children
not like Jean Patou in the hotels of her white
letters/Empire
of the Sun
Yes yes thank you for this here! So many lines I love--sing, yes sing!
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